Agent Skills, MCP, and Scaffolds: A 2026 Guide to the New Vocabulary of AI Agents

Microsoft Research, AWS, and Hugging Face all shipped 'agent skills' material in five days — and they did not use the word the same way. Here is what each definition actually says, where MCP fits, what a scaffold is doing in the picture, and which abstraction to invest in.

05/28/2026 · Industry Trends · 11 min read